I have been using Audacity 2.0.5 for quite some time but recently it has been resetting itself back to the original defaults causing me to go through and reprogram my settings (normalizations, compressions, etc).
What is causing this and how can I prevent it from happening again?
Incidentally - I am using Windows 8.
Historically Audacity has not saved settings across sessions for all effects or plugins.
However, Normalize and Compressor settings should be saved in the audacity.cfg settings file.
If you update to the latest Audacity 2.1.0 from http://web.audacityteam.org/download/windows then all LADPSA and VST effects should save settings across sessions. We are working on built-in effects and other plugin types saving settings for a future release.
When you install 2.1.0, ensure you put a tick (checkmark) in the “Reset Preferences” box half way through the installation, and when you launch Audacity, say yes when it asks if you want to reset Preferences. This will reset audacity.cfg so after that, Normalize and Compressor settings should again be saved in the audacity.cfg file.
Gale